When my second child, Ronni, was born, I would say he was a good baby, too. Then I had Sasha, another good baby. And now I have Spencer. He is such an awesomely good baby! Then I realized...
With Ronni, I had such a handbag of tricks I had to use to get him to sleep at night. I would stand, hold him, nurse him, sing to him, and rock or eventually pace the hallway back and forth. For an hour. Gee, that doesn't sound like a good baby.
Then Sasha cried a lot at night. I'd be up for hours, nursing, rocking, crying, begging... I swear that girl would stay up all night. That doesn't sound like a good baby, either, does it? I never saw her as anything but good.
Spencer, my dreamy little boy with Down syndrome. That sounds like a difficulty to say the least, right? Alas, a little milk, a little bouncing on my shoulder maybe, and he is down at a decent hour. He'll sleep 4-8 hours in this first stretch, and then sleep 4-8 more depending on how long the first stretch was. What a good baby!
So you know what a "good baby" is? Convenient. A bit of an epiphany there. I had really thought I might be tempting fate each time. I mean, could I really be so lucky as to have four good babies?! Why yes, I could! You can't expect babies to be convenient.
Babies are needy creatures by nature, to an extent. I was able to have four "good babies" because I expected them to need me. I expected to be inconvenienced. I expected to place their needs ahead of my own.
So I guess "good babies" are in the eye of the beholder. How have you fared on the "good baby" ratio? Have you ever known a baby that you could classify as anything less than "good?"
